


The Price of Power

by Brosephg



Series: Homo Fortis Chronicles [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 10:19:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17222147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosephg/pseuds/Brosephg
Summary: Not everyone saw the Omnic Crisis coming; those who did prepared well in advance. Some in a nation that would be battered and broken by the global conflict to come made necessary preparations; but just how far ahead did these brilliant minds think? Did they consider everything that could possibly come of their actions? Power is something difficult to obtain, difficult to muster, and so very easy to lose in a heartbeat.





	The Price of Power

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: before we begin, there's a quick disclaimer I'd like to put in place. I do not, in any way, shape or form own, or claim ownership of anything within the Overwatch franchise. Overwatch was created and is owned by Blizzard Entertainment. I do not plan to nor will I receive any form of monetary compensation for this fanwork; this fanwork is a labour of love and a tribute to the world and characters I've become so fond of, with my own personal add-on touches.

** Independent Nation-State of Ontario, Canada, North America **

 

The large, white sheets of paper that’d been taped to the “community centre forum” in downtown Halton, its text formed of tall, blocky letters, had managed to catch the attention of at least one person. To that end, it accomplished its one goal.

 

More than what could be said for some living human beings.

 

The darkness of the evening that’d fallen hours ago, a normal part of life in the Independent Nation-State of Ontario given the season, did not manage to block it from view; most simply paid no attention the “community centre forum”, and those that did would have more likely than not scoffed at the words printed upon the paper sheets, dismissing them as the ravings of a madman or the work of some schemers whose ends and motivations were better left unknown.

 

But one person hadn’t scoffed. One person had actually stopped in their tracks, placed the palm of their hand against the laminated sheet, and took a closer look. His breath was visible in the air, emerging from beneath the hood of his thick, bulky winter coat.

 

Someone else actually gave two squirts of piss about the Omnics. That alone was more than enough to garner the onlooker’s attention.

 

“DO YOU WANT POWER? DO YOU SEE WHAT OMNICA HAS WROUGHT? DO YOU WANT TO PROTECT YOURSELF BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE? COME TO US, WE WILL GIVE YOU POWER. DON’T BE A VICTIM. WE CAN HELP.”

 

Everything they said was true, at least in his mind. Omnica’s scientists and engineers had summoned the demon, and, soon, that demon was going to ravage the planet; it was only a matter of _when_ , not _if._ The idea was laughed at, those in opposition to the creation of fully antonymous artificial intelligence mocked and slandered, called “traditionalists” and “capitalists”, as if such terms in and of themselves were insults, not mere descriptors.

 

There was an address, as well as phone number clearly present on the laminated sheet, in bolded, underlined and italicized text.

 

The onlooker produced “his” smartphone and queried the address. It pointed to a location in Halton’s industrial district. An old power plant, apparently, “permanently closed”.

 

Fishy or not, he had nothing to lose.

 

Long, unkempt hair clung to his face, and longer, greasier strands fell from his scalp, partially obscuring his eyesight. His hooded coat, his gloves, each of the several pairs of sweatpants and the thick climbing boots, all had been scavenged from donation centers.

 

His meals, when he could obtain them, came from soup kitchens and non-profit homeless shelters. The smartphone, stolen, the data obtained on the advertised address gathered using the Wi-Fi of a nearby coffee shop that his device had been capable of connecting to from just outside said shop’s brickwork walls.

 

His name was Lucas Marco, and he was no one. An invisible spectre that lingered on the fringes of society; his haunted eyes told a story of a life created, a name given, and nothing more.

 

The story, of course, was told only to those who’d spare him the time of day, and those people were few and far between. Oftentimes they were his fellow throwaways. The kind of people most looked at and thought, _“I’m thankful I’m not him”_.

 

Three Ontarian dollars, a silent, sympathetic glance from the driver of a bus Lucas had spent nearly twenty minutes in the below-freezing temperatures waiting for, and an hour and thirty-five minute ride on public transport later, Lucas stepped out from the warmth and shelter of the vehicle, only to be slapped in the face by an unrelenting burst of cold air.

 

“You cunt,” Lucas cursed at the temperature, as if it was a living thing out to specifically harm him.

 

He’d memorized the address. 1448 Rock Church Road. The abandoned power plant, the power plant that was marked as “permanently closed”; for all Lucas knew, there were a group of cannibal serial killers held up there using the plastered sheets of paper as a hook, line and sinker to attract victims. So what? There was nothing in the world worth living for. The world was cruel, society the menacing creature that chewed the weak and spat them back out as a fleshy, bloodied mess of viscera and lumpy meat-chunks.

 

The walk was slow. The moonlight above was just barely able to break through the cloud coverage, and offered some additional glow to the occasional set of street lamps that flanked the sterile, grey walkways.

 

Everything that existed in Halton’s industrial district was grey. The buildings, the roads, the walkways, all grey. The industrial district might as well have been a graveyard. Then again, even most graveyards had more greenery than this dreary hellhole. Orwell would’ve clapped at the sight of it and called out, “I told you so!”

 

Or maybe the whole issue only existed in Lucas’s mind. He couldn’t have known for sure.

 

Before long, the vagrant spectre arrived at location. Its front gates were split wide open, not a light present. The power plant was cloaked in shadow. Goliath towers rose up and lorded over all other structures and the occasional vehicle that passed Lucas by. Clusters of structures were bound together as a grey, dystopian family, entombed within the tall chain mesh fences that surrounded the premises, topped with intertwining masses of barbed wire.

 

Lucas half-expected to be terminated by sniper fire when he stepped away from the walkway, and onto the property before him.

 

An expanse that had likely once been a parking lot for the former employees of the power plant had become, almost, a jungle.

 

Unsightly weeds grew without outside opposition, and what amounted practically to fields of grass that rose to the six foot two Lucas’s waistline were waded through, before the forgotten, abandoned spectre approached an open side door. The portcullis had been propped open with a cinder block.

 

From inside of the structure, he could see golden-brown light. He was half-surprised the plant still had power at all. The location looked to be, at the very least, several decades old.

 

Lucas Marco stepped through the opened door. The soles of his climbing boots clacked against smoothed, cement floor.

 

An arm wrapped around his neck with enormous force to nearly crush his laryngeal prominence.

 

A hand pressed a sopping wet cloth against his face. With considerably force, it pushed downward, nearly bending Lucas’s nose to one side. Fight or flight instincts took control of the proverbial wheel within the vagrant’s mind, and he fought as viciously as he possibly could, for longer than he imagined he would’ve in such a situation, before all-encompassing exhaustion, as sudden and as unseen as his assailant, conquered him without effort. The sweet, chemical scent was almost all any of his senses could comprehend, and it only seemed to grow stronger, as he grew weaker.

 

Lucas barely felt the sensation of his tall, lanky form crashing against the concrete flooring before he knew no more.

 

 

When Lucas Marco awoke, he did so upon a soft, cool surface, one that felt like plastic. There was room for Lucas to push his form against the fabric; why he didn’t immediately concern himself with where he was, even he didn’t know. In truth, Lucas didn’t really care.

 

The situation was a comfortable one. It was more comfortable than falling asleep under a bridge, or in the lobby of an apartment building. Somehow, being drugged, knocked out, and moved from one location to another was favourable, when compared to what the vagrant was accustomed to.

 

_“I really, really need higher standards.”_

 

His body wasn’t restrained, nor was he missing any limbs. No pain occurred when he moved said limbs, though a barely-noticeable headache was quietly humming in the side of his head.

 

As Lucas’s eyes opened, he noticed that there was a large, metallic structure some five feet above him. A bright, golden-brown light that originated from within it beamed directly onto his body, though, his eyes didn’t reel in shock or pain. His eyes were, in fact, protected from the shining light by a pair of sunglasses that’d been placed on his face.

 

Lucas took a moment to consider his surroundings. Though his body wasn’t restrained, he had been entrapped within a small structure. Four walls surrounded him, a ceiling boxed him in, and the same smoothed, concrete flooring was below him. White and sterile, the walls and ceiling were not unlike those that might’ve been found in a hospital.

 

“Hello,” the calm, surprisingly gentle, almost strangely fatherly voice spoke through a tinny intercom system that’d apparently been wired into the small, cubical structure entombing Lucas. “You have many questions, I’m sure. Hold them. Don’t panic. You’re in no danger, though I do believe you’d have a difficult time believing that, if you recall your first encounter with one of my aides. It was necessary, I assure you, and I swear on my once-good name that I’ll pay, out of pocket, for any medical expenses incurred.”

 

“Awfully sweet of you,” Lucas remarked, his voice gravelly, throat scratchy. “A bit of a bummer that I’m not dead, but, awe well. You win some, and then you lose some.”

 

“I hope you change your attitude towards life in the future,” the voice on the other side of the intercom spoke, evidently having heard Lucas’s reply. “Life is full of surprises, wonders and much to be grateful for... Though, by my own admission, life can also be tragic, unfair, and torturous. We aren’t here to discuss philosophy, however. You may wonder why you’ve been imprisoned. At least, you may have construed it as such.”

 

“I can definitely see how someone might come to that conclusion,” Lucas retorted.

 

“The walls and ceiling that encapsulates you contain several sheets of lead. This is for our own safety; as well as for the safety of the public at large,” the voice on the other side went on, as if Lucas hadn’t said anything at all, “you came to us because you wanted power. You, like we, see the bleak, apocalyptic future that the Omnica Corporation will bring down upon humanity like a biblical revelation, and you want to fight back. This is good. You aren’t the first, nor, I’m sure, will you be the last. We will give you power... through the miracle of cosmic radiation. What exactly that is, isn’t necessary for you to know; what you should know is that it is perfectly harmless.”

 

“That’s...Alright, you’ve got me, and I wasn’t expecting that. Surprise, so, I’m going to be turned into a mutated goop-pile? Not the way I imagined going out, but, just a bit more exciting than freezing to death or being knifed. Seriously, I’ve been knifed before, it SUCKS.”

 

Most would’ve panicked in this situation. Most would have thrown themselves against the walls, begged, pleaded, screamed and wept aloud, prayed to a deity of their choice, or simply might’ve became trapped in their own fight or flight response.

 

Most people weren’t destitute, broken, abandoned spectres cursed to wander. Most people didn’t see death as a figure of relief.

 

“You’ll notice a small table nearby your stretcher,” the calm, exceedingly soft, gentle voice spoke aloud, “on that counter is a powerful sedative, and a cup of water. Take it. You’ll want to sleep through this experience.”

 

Undaunted, Lucas rose, allowing his head to spin and his eyes to “roll” in his head for some few moments before he clambered down from the gurney, popped the elongated, oval-shaped white pill into the back of his mouth, chugged it down with a sip of water – a skill Lucas had honed from years of prescription drug abuse proceeding his current predicament –  and returned to the gurney, as comfortably as if he was climbing back into his own warm, comfortable bed after relieving himself in the middle of the night.

 

“Have you taken your sedative?”

 

“Ayep, I’m ready. If you’re going to kill me, you can be upfront about it, you know?”

 

“No one is going to harm you. Not while you’re under my care; now, relax, allow yourself to sink. Allow yourself to fall from consciousness and drift into the river of rest. Follow my voice...”

 

He drifted into slumber. No more than a few minutes had passed, and sleep claimed him as its own, at least for a limited time.

 

A good thing, too; the overhead mass of metal, connected to another square apparatus covered in dials, knobs and screens displaying flowing charts of data relevant to the machine’s various applications by inter-wound tendrils of multicoloured wires began to beam down upon the homeless vagrant without a family in the world an invisible ray that slowly, but surely, encapsulated his entire body. The overhead mass of metal, superficially resembling a satellite dish, moved on its squeaking hinges, upward and downward, bathing Lucas’s body in what the voice on the other end of the intercom had called “cosmic radiation”.

 

At first, nothing happened. For a period of fifteen minutes, nothing happened.

 

Then, it came. The changes came.

 

Entire sections of flesh and bone suddenly expanded outwards. With such force were they jutted that sections of the vagrant’s clothing were not merely torn, but ripped to shreds, forced away from the vagrant’s wrinkled, pale skin.

 

Flesh gurgled, muscle mass, suddenly formed out of flabby sections of fat deposits produced wet, sloppy noises, and bones cracked repeatedly as the vagrant grew, and grew, and GREW. His cheeks began to sag, and large, bulbous masses of flesh began to form upon and around his neck. Lucas’s forehead began to rise, before settling into a rising crescent, bent awkwardly to one side. The entire right half of Lucas’s face became bloated. Lumpy, gurgling tumours formed. Caucasian flesh in some areas where these tumours sprouted became discoloured, greyish blue.

 

By the time all had settled, the oversized, muscle-infested form of Lucas Marco had grown nearly four feet in height. His weight had increased in less than a half hour, from one hundred and fifteen pounds, to just over three times that weight, clocking in at four hundred pounds.

 

Lucas’s eyelids split upwards and downwards, allowing his eyes to bear witness to his surroundings.

 

His entire body felt wrong. He felt bloated, heavy, as if his entire form had been prickled with invisible pins and needles, those associated with lack of blood flowing into a particular part of the body, assuming pressure had been applied to it for too long.

 

He swiftly lost consciousness once more. Perhaps his mind simply believed that returning to a state of sleep would allow the uncomfortable, unwanted expressions to pass.

 

During that time, the makeshift “cell” was dismantled in a period of some few minutes by a ragtag crew of hazmat suit-bound aides. The gurney, too, with considerable effort from almost seven aides, each of whom had to exert more force than they’d exerted in years under their overseer’s employ, was wheeled away, carefully, with the utmost attention paid to keeping the enormous, misshapen body from meeting any harm. Unnaturally elongated limbs dangled from the four corners of the gurney. Their veins bulged, coursing with unsightly, illuminated bluish-green liquid.

 

Into a nearby elevator car the gurney was wheeled; the misshapen form’s limbs were tucked inward with tender care to permit it to board said car.

 

Downwards it went, soaring past several floors and some few sub-basements. It stopped at the eighth floor below the ground.

 

There was a low, barely-conscious grunt.

 

The misshapen form’s limbs jerked, suddenly, shaking the entire gurney. Its metallic faded white structure groaned in protest.

 

Lucas Marco’s eyelids slammed open, his eyes’ whites bloodshot, and veins interconnecting like the strands of silk in a spider’s web. His lips struggled to part. Bulbous tumours weighed down upon his lips.

 

Chemical reactions surged within his brain like tidal waves slamming against a rugged, rocky coastline.

 

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaHHHHHH!”

 

The quiet, sarcastic, but co-operative vagrant’s uncharacteristic outburst caused the aides to only increase the strength they applied, pushing the gurney along as quickly as they could, down several hallways, before the unorthodox caravan passed beneath an ornate, cracked archway, and into another section of the power plant.

 

He struggled to push himself upward. The newfound and unfamiliar weight pushing against Lucas was far and away stronger than his mind and body’s will to achieve bipedal locomotion. Lucas swatted at the air, truly not wishing to harm any of those who were obviously doing their best to achieve whatever it was they were attempting to achieve.

 

There was a sharp turn.

 

Through a set of reinforced steel doors, the gurney was pushed, and brought to a safe halt. Each of the aides proceeded to flee, and closed shut the steel doors behind them with a series of monstrous, metallic crashes.

 

The room in which Lucas and his uncannily familiar, disturbingly comforting gurney had found themselves was like something out of a Hollywood movie’s depiction of a patient’s room in a lunatic asylum, though this space was considerably larger than the average closet a mentally ill character in a fictional asylum would’ve been provided with.

 

Appropriately so; his heart beat a mile a minute as he beheld dozens of other gurneys, identical to his own, each with a slumbering human laid out upon them, their faces the physical manifestations of tranquility.

 

Lucas swallowed, hard. He looked down to his enormous, muscular arms and his gargantuan hands, with their thick, stubby fingers, and his legs, thicker than the thickest tree trunks he’d ever seen. Lucas nearly screamed aloud.

 

Another intercom buzzed and crackled to life.

 

“This is going to sound very unreasonable... I need you stay calm.”

 

His words slurred, his throat feeling as if it was going to suddenly close upon itself, Lucas snapped, “you’re goddamn right it’s hard for me to stay calm! You turned me into a... Something not right! I’m even more FUCKED than I was before! Would’ve been better off as a blob! You ass!”

 

Then, as if nothing had happened at all, the activity within his brain began to settle.

 

Maybe, just maybe, he was finally going to die.

 

There was an odd, uncomfortable tugging in his chest. Lucas fought it back with all of his might. If he was going to die, then, so be it. There was no reason to be afraid of it. The escape he’d craved, the escape his own cowardice had prevented him from seeking out was at hand.

 

Relief fell over Lucas Marco like a gentle, warm, woollen blanked placed over his form by a loving matron. It was almost over. It was all almost over.

 

Mercy, finally, mercy; life was _finally_ going to pull its last punch.

 

“You are not... I won’t repeat that expletive, for your sake, as well as my own. Don’t worry about a thing. You’re about to become very, very cold. You won’t perish. Not as you are now... When the time comes, as we’re both certain it will, we will awaken you. You’ll fight for your right to exist. You’ll fight against the sins of Omnica. We’ll rise from the ashes of their hubris.”

 

“You... You sound like a cult leader... I... Like it. Very charismatic, are you... Wearing sunglasses and a two... two-piece suit, b-because... I think I’d like a glass of Kool-Aid.”

 

“There’s no need at all to try and mask your anxiety with witty quips and less than topical references. I don’t mean to belittle you; I really do find that quite witty, quite observational. Acknowledge the anxiety. There’s no harm in acknowledging it. By pretending it isn’t there, you’re only going to make it try and grab your attention with greater frequency.”

 

That calm, fatherly voice hadn’t been lying. The temperature was steadily dropping.

 

Lucas Marco leaned back in his gurney, took a long, deep breath, and exhaled, as several streams of warm, wet liquid emotion dripped from the corners of his eyes. They froze quickly on his face.

 

“It’s over... Thank God... I was about ready to call it quits any... ways. Back to where I came... Rest, plenty of... Rest, relaxation...”

 

With a shudder, the death throes of his mortal body, Lucas Marco knew no more. The slowly dwindling temperature of the enclosed, windowless tomb lulled him to his end.


End file.
